Hi folks. This is Murshed from Common Cause office in Washington D.C. again. I wanted follow up with everyone here from the discussion on
Ohio Election hearings yesterday. As some of you already know we had Election hearings in Columbus on Saturday and Monday. Common Cause Ohio has been doing some great work in collecting as much information as possible on all voting irregularities in Ohio. We are doing everything we can to back up their efforts here in Washington.
Since it looks like a recount of presidential votes in Ohio is
a near certainty at this point, we need to make sure the recount process is not marred by the same taint of partisanship, as it was in Florida in 2000. We realize how partisan supervision of elections has undermined voter confidence in our electoral process.
Therefore we are calling on Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who led President Bush's re-election efforts in Ohio, and whose partisanship in this election drew comparisons to Katherine Harris in Florida to remove himself from the recount process. We are asking you to
join us in
signing our nationwide petition requesting that Secretary of State Blackwell remove himself from any and all recount-related procedures.
We have posted the entire text of email we just sent out to our thousands of line supporters and activists all across the country on
our blog. Please sign the petition and get this out to everyone you know in Ohio and everywhere all across the country. Thanks again guys.
UPDATE: (11/17 5:48 pm PST) Guys we just passed the 10,000-signature mark on this petition. We have collected 10,005 signatures in little more than six hours since we launched this petition. Amazing. Thank you again so much for all the kind words in support in this thread. Again, as I mentioned down below in this thread it would give us a huge boost if you
visit our blog , and
post your words of encouragement so that everyone else at CC can read your words of encouragement. More importantly, if you have any specific comments and suggestions on how we can intensify this effort we would
love to hear them .Perhaps if we can push up this petition numbers somewhere around 90-100,000 by Monday or earlier next week, then we can think about reaching out to all our
coalition partnersin joining in our effort and then think about do a full court pressure via the MSM. It all starts directly from you.
Again, please keep in mind that we are not supporting the request for recount to change the outcome of the election, nor is that outcome the intent of this effort. However, we believe that it is imperative in a democracy that every citizen's vote is counted. And, in order o make sure that any recount process in Ohio is totally free of the taint of partisanship, we are asking for a very partisan Secretary of State to
remove himself from supervising any recount process. Thanks so much again for all your amazing support.